Weekly Progress: November 9th, 2016

Here is a list of various musical projects that I'm working on, and my current progress with those projects.

1) This blog - ongoing:

I wanted to make this blog so that all guitarists/bassists/ukelele players - whether you're one of my students, or just a student of music in general - would have access to all of the information they would need to learn to play guitar.

As a guitar teacher, such a resource is actually good for my business, not bad. There is only so much as a teacher that I think I can accomplish with the written word (and, by extension, with videos, pictures, etc). Most guitar students need one on one time with a teacher. This blog simply serves (or will serve) as a way to enhance and accelerate your learning on the instrument. It's not a replacement for your teacher, if you have one.

Progress is slow, but steady. I work on the blog just about everyday, but the learning curve has been steep - I'm not used to blogger's blog interface and tools (I used to blog on Wordpress, but didn't want to have ads displayed to readers, which is why I made the switch). I'll figure it all out eventually! In the meantime, I'll just have to live with the quirks of not knowing everything about blogger.

I don't think I'll ever "finish" this project, as I'll want to keep blogging, but I feel like I will eventually reach a critical mass of information that, if I decided to stop updating, it would still serve as an excellent resource for guitarists (bassists, ukelele...ists?).

Progress so far: 1%?

2) Songs For Ghosts (my next album) - just starting (sort of):

I have 10 songs I've been meaning to record for a number of years, but various projects and circumstances allowed me to put it off. Regardless, I'm back into recording and enjoying writing music again.

I recorded all of the songs as demos for some friends and family (and for some of my students to hear), and now I'm just starting on recording the actual album. I'll be starting tonight with some of the guitar tracks for a few of the songs.

Songs for Ghosts will be my second album, and this one will be all acoustic. I'm really looking forward to sharing the end product with you! I can't tell you just how long it will take, but my guess is probably less than a year (which may sound like a long time, but I have to juggle my recording with teaching responsibilities, as well as my wife and three kids!)

Progress so far: 25% - the songs are written, I know more or less what they're going to sound like, I just need to record, produce, mix, and master the music.

3) Other repertoire - ongoing:

I have some other songs I'm working on for various reasons as well, which I will list in no particular order:

Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel - I've almost mastered the intro to the song, which just leaves me the verse and chorus, if I remember correctly. I'd put my progress at about 20% on this one.

How Long Will I Love You from the "About Time" movie soundtrack - I know how to play all of it (it's not a difficult song for me), I just need to learn the lyrics and memorize the chord progressions.

Various songs for my 3rd album: Why am I already working on material for my 2nd album? I find that once I start writing, it's very hard to stop. The floodgates of creativity open up, and I can't in good conscience close them. The best I can do is try to focus on the project at hand (my 2nd album), while allowing some small amount of time for writing new material.

I've already got about 13 or 14 different song ideas, some more fleshed out than others. Only two of the songs are "finished" (I have the general structure and all of the lyrics, but haven't done any recording yet), and a third song is close to that point. The others are all in the initial stage of creation, where I have some ideas, but no clear idea how the song is going to turn out. (Songwriting is a subject near and dear to my heart, and you can expect me to write a lot more about it in the future.)

Other random music projects: I've got a few ideas for some kids songs and possibly some video game music, but all of this is sort of on the back burner until I get some of my other stuff finished. I toy with the songs every now and again, but don't give them any serious focus at the moment.


That's about it!

That's what I'm working on these days. It's good to write down and keep track of these kinds of projects, if for no other reason than to stay organized, and perhaps to motivate yourself to finish them!

Here's hoping you're making great progress on whatever you're working on!